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Our courses draw on literature, philosophy, history and many other disciplines to examine African, African-American and Caribbean/Latin American themes. We also study the social construction of racial differences and its relation to the perpetuation of racism and racial domination.

Department Highlights

The Major

Our majors begin by studying the central debates and problems within our field. They go on to take courses on various Black cultures and to examine the links among them.

Student Research

Students explore topics such as gender and class issues in diasporic literature; international hip hop dance culture; the use of statistical models in predicting the spread of AIDS in Africa; and representations of Black children in picture books.

Our History

Founded in the early 1970s in response to student protests and demands, we explore issues of race and the cultural connections between Africa and the Black diaspora. (Pictured: Amherst's first black faculty member, Professor James Q. Denton.)

After Amherst

Our majors go on to careers in education, business, medicine, law and other fields in which an understanding of racial and cultural differences is important. Many complete graduate programs at top national research institutions.

Scholar-in-Residence

Each year, through the Charles Hamilton Houston Scholar-in-Residence program, we invite an important intellectual in the field to campus for a week to deliver a lecture, direct a faculty seminar and participate in the intellectual life on campus.

Black Studies Courses

Introduction to Black Studies

Description

This interdisciplinary course combines teaching of the field’s foundational texts with instruction in reading and writing, to prepare you for advancement in Black studies and other humanities and social sciences.

Introduction to the Black Atlantic

Description

Trace “the African Diaspora" from 15th-century European explorations of coastal West Africa to Brazil’s 1888 abolition of slavery. Examine large-scale historical processes as well as African and African-American lives, communities and cultures.

Exploring Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Description

Explore the broadest themes of Black studies through careful reading of this influential novel, comparing it to other examples from world literature, American literature, and the black literary tradition.

Black Studies Prizes

Every year we award the Edward Jones Prize, named for the College’s first Black alumnus, and the Charles Hamilton Houston Prize, named for the civil rights lawyer and member of the Amherst Class of 1915 (pictured here).

Meet Our Faculty

We specialize in areas ranging from West African art, to the transatlantic slave trade, to contemporary Caribbean literature and culture, to African American history from the antebellum period to the present, to the experiences of Black people in England and Europe. Black Studies also draws affiliate faculty from many other departments. Meet the entire department.